


The Warrior and the Princess

by pipistrelle



Series: Glimmadora Week 2020 2.0 [3]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018), Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: Crossover, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:28:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25920592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipistrelle/pseuds/pipistrelle
Summary: Adora left the Horde that raised her to drift aimlessly across Greece, looking for a purpose. Glimmer escaped her sheltered home to look for a way to fight its enemies. What they find is each other, and a life neither of them expected.For the "Medieval AU" prompt for Glimmadora Week! The Xena/She-Ra crossover that absolutely no one asked for.
Relationships: Adora & Glimmer (She-Ra), Adora/Glimmer (She-Ra)
Series: Glimmadora Week 2020 2.0 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1880776
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11
Collections: Shera





	The Warrior and the Princess

**Author's Note:**

> This story picks pieces from the first season of both shows, each chapter being framed around a Xena episode. (I had to cut myself off at four or I'd never get anywhere near finished enough to post it.) Chapter 1 is set around the Xena pilot, "Sins of the Past".
> 
> Characters will be tagged as they appear. Also, just a heads up; I truly appreciate Catra and her arc, but she's turning out to be very villainous in this, so if she's your absolute fave you may want to give this one a pass.

It nearly kills her to walk away from the Horde. But the Horde's done worse to every living soul in Thaymor -- and before that Laurel, and Alykos, and Kepae, and places she never knew the names of, that she only saw as smoking ruins from Shadow Weaver’s palanquin that travelled with the supply trains and new recruits three days behind Lord Hordak's main force. The ruins, Shadow Weaver explained, had been rebel strongholds. Only those who refused Lord Hordak’s offers of peace and mercy, who insisted on clinging to their warlike ways, earned the fire and the sword.

It was a good lesson, memorable, easy to understand. Rebels worshipped the old gods, put their faith in lies and illusions, tried to ensnare Lord Hordak’s forces with dark magic. And look what it earned them; their gods and magic did not, could not defend them even from petty local warlords, let alone the great tidal wave of the Horde. In her dark, dry voice that seemed to carry with more power than the war drums, Shadow Weaver always used to say the same thing when they passed another blighted field: that the only true security lay in the hand of the Prime, Hordak’s great god and master, who would come and bring perfect order to the world once they had conquered it in His name.

Adora had believed it. _How could I?_ she asked herself, and then: how could she _not_ have believed it? It was the way things were. Shadow Weaver distorted and exaggerated, but she very rarely lied. The burned-out villages made sense; they fit into the order of things.

But Adora had seen the faces of the children, at Thaymor. It had been a mistake to put her on the front lines. Shadow Weaver thought she was ready, but she couldn’t be an instrument of the Prime’s perfect order. She broke, in the end. She failed.

In the weeks and months after her desertion she drifts aimlessly across Macedonia, numb and useless. The Horde hasn't reached this part of the country yet; Hordak is tied up with attacks on his supply lines by seafaring raiders along the coast. But soon enough he’ll turn his attention to these rich farmlands and ransack them, to these prosperous town and subjugate them, and the people who don't get slaughtered will come and stand in their village squares and listen to Shadow Weaver tell them that they’re better off this way. There's nothing Adora can do to stop it.

She doesn't like fighting -- every time she lifts her sword she remembers Thaymor, the wailing and blood -- but her Horde training makes her the best soldier outside a Roman legion, and when there's no work building or harvesting, sometimes she hires herself out as a guard to have a dinar to buy bread with at the end of the day. Only a guard, never a mercenary. She makes herself that promise.

At night, on the edge of sleep, she hears Catra laughing at her, at the idea that she can keep a promise -- that anyone can. That there's anything to trust in the world. _Naïve_ , she taunts. _You're such a fool, Adora. Think you're noble, think you're invincible? You'll find out the truth._

She's learning.

\--

She chooses the road because it's a lonely one, little more than a stony footpath through hills with ambitions of becoming mountains. All the wagons and most of the horse traffic take a longer, safer way to Corinth, and the most valuable cargo goes by sea, so the only people who take the hill road are fools and locals. She doesn't mind; she doesn't have much to fear from bandits, and after the last few weeks playing caravan guard for a man who ended up being in a warlord's pay, she's ready for some time away from the bustling centers of civilization.

She realizes just how far she is from civilization when, on the third day, she stumbles onto a kidnapping in progress. At least a dozen men, mean as half-starved mongrels and about as clean, dragging nearly as many chained girls and young women through that desolate wilderness. Adora drops back behind a stand of trees, assessing the captors without thinking. They've no fear of being pursued, that's plain from the way they're shouting and cracking whips in the air to keep the girls scared. It could be they've come a long way already -- pretty likely, judging by the torn but not tattered states of the girls' dresses -- or that these are the daughters of peasants, without anyone willing or able to come to their defense.

In half a minute she's up the tallest tree, and drops into the middle of the slavers like a bolt from the hand of Zeus himself. In five more minutes they're all groaning in the dirt.

Adora sheathes her sword and shows her empty hands. She knows she can be a menacing sight, tall and well-muscled as any shoulder, dressed in her old Horde armor with the insignia ripped off. "I'm here to help," she says to the girls, who are huddling together, mostly gaping at her. All except the nearest one, a short girl maybe a few years younger than Adora herself, with remarkable pink hair and eyes the color of a flower Adora’s seen but doesn’t know the name for.

She straightens up and says in a ringing voice, "We thank you, traveller. Though we could have totally handled it ourselves --" The girl next to her elbows her and hisses in her ear, "-- but we're still grateful, of course. What name shall we call our brave rescuer?"

"Adora," Adora says, blushing, and turns to hacking apart their chains with her sword.

She comes to the brave girl last. Her sword's served her well for years, but six months of hard use on the road and now an hour's hacking at iron chains is too much for it, and it shatters at a fault as soon as she brings it down on the girl's shackles. "I'm sorry," she blurts out. "I'll go with you back to wherever they took you from, and we'll find a blacksmith, I'm sure they'll be able to --"

"It's okay, Adora," the girl says, grinning fiercely. "I don't need a blacksmith. Watch." Before Adora's eyes she disappears in a cloud of sparkling stardust, and appears again, about six inches to the left of where she'd been. The shackles clank to the ground.

"Magic," Adora says, and claps her hand over her mouth, like the very mention of the word might draw a hissing pack of Shadow Weaver’s creatures out of the darkness between the trees. It’s impossible -- Shadow Weaver always told her that the only ones who dared use wild, dangerous magic like that were rebels, saboteurs against the eventual reign of Horde Prime. "Are you --"

"I'm Princess Glimmer of Selampros," she declares. "And you _have_ to come back to the castle with me. My mother will give you a royal welcome!"

-

Adora learns a great deal about Selampros on their way across the foothills to reach it. It's a very small kingdom, and deliberately difficult to find; its heart is a fertile valley hidden at the edge of the mountains, incredibly defensible, which is what's protected it from attacks from the Horde for so long. As a consequence, it's the last free member of the Etherian League, a confederation of cities that prospered for centuries from their mutual exchanges of magic, travel, and trade, until the Horde began to swallow them, one by one.

Adora's heard the name before. "I thought they were wiped out long ago?"

"Most of them were. We're all that's left." Glimmer looks grim. "We've tried everything we can think of, but no matter what we do those monsters just keep crushing every force we send against them. My mother's about ready to give up on fighting completely, she wants to just hide in our little valley and let them kill whole cities of innocent people!"

"Maybe your mother's right," Adora says. Glimmer glances sharply at her, but she hardly notices. "I've seen what they can do. If you have somewhere you can hide from them, if you can escape Hordak's reach, then maybe it is wisest to stay there. Better than becoming just another smoking ruin."

"The Horde killed my father," Glimmer says flatly. Adora's stomach twists. "I can't just hide and let them murder whoever they please."

"I'm so sorry," Adora murmurs, numb and reeling. Wondering if it was her squad that dealt the killing blow, that left Glimmer devastated, her home without a king. Thinking of all the other fathers and mothers and children left dead in the path of Hordak's army --

"It was a long time ago. I was just a little girl," Glimmer says. She puts a hand on Adora's arm. "Are you all right? I'm sorry, we can -- talk about something else. Where did you say you were from?"

Nausea grips Adora by the throat. If Glimmer finds out who raised her, this little trip will be over, and she and the rest of the girls will have no one to protect them until they make it home. "East," she says. "Far to the east. You won't have heard of it. I -- I never knew my parents, actually. I was…found on a riverbank. My foster mother raised me."

"That must have been hard," Glimmer says, and then her voice turns sharp and cold, like crystal. "Until the Horde is stopped, these atrocities will never end. Maybe you can tell my mother of what you've seen in your travels, and help me convince her not to give up the fight."

"Maybe," Adora says weakly, because Glimmer's looking at her with such a fiery hope that disappointing her seems worse than plunging a sword through her heart. No reason to do that; she'll just wait until they're close enough to Selampros that Glimmer and the others will be safe, and then Adora can slip away in the night, and Glimmer will never need to know how close she came to inviting a murderer into her peoples' last safe haven.

-

The next three days are wretched. Adora's secret burns like a brand on her heart. Every gesture of friendship from Glimmer wounds; the food Glimmer offers her turns to ash in her mouth, and the stories she tells of her bright, beautiful home just bring to mind all that Adora's destroyed, or helped destroy. She's relieved to the pitch of giddiness when Glimmer tells her that Selampros is just over the next ridge, and they'll reach it in another day at most.

Adora takes up her usual place by the fire that evening as Glimmer and the rest of the girls look for comfortable places to spread out the tattered blankets they stole from the slavers' camp. It isn’t unusual for her to stay awake well after nightfall, but she wishes she still had her sword; sharpening it always calmed her nerves, and she feels like her restless hands will give her away. But no one seems to notice anything out of the ordinary. Glimmer and the others all drop off to sleep as usual. Adora banks the fire and slips out around them, as quietly as she can. Catra always excelled in stealth training, Adora was never more than mediocre, but she has enough skill for this, and she's so on edge she feels like she can hear every breath of wind, every leaf whispering against leaf in the whole of the wood.

She makes it nearly a mile back down the path and is just starting to relax when someone looms out of the night and says her name. Glimmer’s leaning on a tree up ahead, pale in the green shadows, where a moment ago there had definitely been nothing but darkness. Adora’s instincts were honed by years of battle with Shadow Weaver’s ephemeral beasts; she throws herself back with a yell that probably wakes the whole forest, overbalances reaching for a sword that isn't there, and falls. At least she has enough sense left to turn the fall into a roll and get back on her feet. "What are -- how did you get here!"

Glimmer’s watching her, trying not to laugh. She holds up a hand. It shimmers briefly, like the sun on water. "Magic," she says. "Remember?"

"Oh -- right." Adora gives up looking for something to use as a weapon and lets her hands fall to her sides. "Sorry I yelled, I didn’t mean to --"

Glimmer’s amusement cracks, showing a fault line of imperious anger beneath. She really is a queen’s daughter. “Stop. Just tell me why you’re leaving."

"Glimmer, I --" Adora stops, looks away. Glimmer's been kind to her, and she was hoping to avoid causing her pain. She's caused enough pain. But it'll be better to do it now than to let herself get pulled in any deeper and do greater harm. "Thank you, for these last few days. It’s been -- nice. Really nice. But I can't go to Selampros with you."

"Why not?" Glimmer's voice is harder now, edged with flint -- or with quartz, light and clear. "Are you going to give our position away to the Horde?"

"What? No! I would never -- Glimmer, I swear to you. I would never do that."

"But you are a Horde soldier, aren't you? I've never seen anyone else fight like you do." Glimmer drops down and advances, hands shimmering. For a second every tale of the twisted, corrupting effects of wild magic flare bright in Adora's memory, and she takes a step back. Then she hears Catra's laugh, mocking her, that she'd be so afraid of an enemy combatant whose head barely comes up to her chin. She could take Glimmer out in three heartbeats --

But no. It's not Glimmer she's afraid of; it's that part of herself. She's glad she doesn’t have a sword.

"Yes," she says. "I was. They raised me. I really was found on a riverbank -- at least, that's what Shadow Weaver always told me. I grew up as a cadet, and I was set to be promoted to a captain when I joined the ranks."

"So what are you doing out rescuing princesses in the middle of the woods, huh? Why didn't you drag me back to them yourself?"

"I left," Adora says, looking at the ground. Glimmer can strike her down if she wants; maybe she’ll be safer that way. It was foolish to think Adora could protect her, could protect anyone. "I couldn't -- I couldn't do it. I didn't want to just kill and destroy. So I deserted. I don't want to bring destruction to your home, it sounds like a beautiful place. And you were right about its location -- if I don't know it, the Horde can't get it out of me if I'm recaptured."

Glimmer's stopped a few paces away. Adora can't see the glow from her hands anymore. "Where will you go, then?"

Adora shrugs. "Anywhere. It doesn't matter. There's nowhere I need to be."

Glimmer's hands, ordinary now, close around Adora's. "Take me with you."

"What? No." Adora's mouth is dry, her pulse hammering like it never does even in a fight. Glimmer's hands are warm, almost too warm. Maybe some after-effect of her magic? It’s making Adora's fingertips tingle like they're about to start shimmering, too, and for a moment she’s terrified again of what Glimmer might do to her. Among other things. "It's too dangerous. You'd get hurt."

"Not with you there to protect me! And it's not like I'm totally defenseless --"

"Magic, yeah. I remember." Adora risks a glance up. Glimmer's very close, closer than anyone's gotten to her voluntarily since the night before she left, when she was curled up with Catra by the fire. "Why would you want to wander around with a Horde traitor? Don't you want to get home?"

"I've been at home my whole life. If I go back now, especially after that whole 'captured by slavers' fiasco, my mother's going to lock me in a tower and not let me leave for the next hundred years. I want to see more of the world than that one valley. I want to _fight_ , Adora! And you can teach me, and show me Greece, and maybe I can find some way to beat the Horde once and for all!"

"I don't know if anything can beat them," Adora says. Glimmer's fierce look changes, into something softer but just as determined, and before Adora realizes what's happening Glimmer hugs her. It's the first time anyone's shown her any gentle touch in months. She's startled and ashamed to feel how close it brings her to tears -- and she clamps down on the desire to squeeze Glimmer to her, to sink into the soft warmth of a girl she _barely knows_ , who would have tried to kill her without a thought if they'd met a month ago. 

When Glimmer lets her go, she feels dazedly like she's taken a step back; not just from some impossible princess she met in the woods, but from a precipice that she's been walking on the edge of for a very long time without looking down into the yawning pit beneath, but knowing all the while that it was there.

"Then maybe we'll just see Greece," Glimmer’s saying. "Before the Horde destroys it. But it'll be better than spending a hundred years in a tower -- or wandering around alone." The decision seems to have been made. Glimmer starts to shimmer again, and Adora feels suddenly like she's shaking apart in the heart of an earthquake, and dropping into ice-cold water, and caught painlessly in the heart of a bolt of lightning -- just for a second, then it's over, and she's gripping Glimmer's shoulders to keep from falling into the soft grass of a moonlit clearing nowhere near the rocky path they’d been standing on.

Glimmer’s arms are around her again. "Sorry! Should have warned you. Sometimes it's rough on people the first time," she’s saying. "I'll be right back. I'm just going to send my mother a message so she knows I'm alive."

Glimmer disappears again. Adora falls to her knees, getting her breath back. The moon is high overhead, a quarter from full. On the clearing's edge is a great grandmother of a tree, with a broad low canopy and roots that tangle aboveground like gnarled fingers. In the center of the roots is a flash of silver; a perfectly round little spring, burbling into a pool the size of a wagon wheel that reflects the moonlight like a mirror. Glimmer curtsies deeply to the tree, like it’s a wise and valued chancellor of her court, and tilts her head as though listening. Then she kneels and talks directly to the water, too softly for Adora to hear.

"More magic?" Adora croaks. She hasn't quite shaken off the trepidation from twenty years of horror stories, but Glimmer's magic seems harmless enough. Even being completely surrounded and moved by it -- though uncomfortable -- hasn't turned her into anything horrible. She pats herself down just to make sure.

"Sort of," Glimmer says over her shoulder. "My mother’s a moon goddess, I can send her a message this way. It would be easier if the moon was full, but if we wait that long she might actually come looking for me."

Adora starts to feel the ground disappearing from under her again, even though Glimmer’s nowhere near her. She clutches at the grass and tries very hard not to think of Shadow Weaver’s stories of slavering superhuman monsters descending from the clouds to devour whole families as a bloody sacrifice to fuel their blasphemous powers. "Your mother is a _goddess_?!"

"Only a minor one! Not like, Hera or anyone like that. Don't worry, she doesn't have enough power to chase us around _and_ protect the kingdom. And now she'll know I'm okay! But still, we'd better get out of here."

"I'm kidnapping the daughter of a goddess," Adora says, just to see if saying it wakes her up from this lucid fever dream. It doesn't. Glimmer puts Adora's arm over her shoulder and hauls her up, towards a path dimly visible on the other side of a line of trees. Hopefully a path that leads back to the old, sane world Adora understood.

“Hey,” Adora says suddenly. “If you can vanish like that --”

“It’s called teleporting.”

“-- why did you let those men keep you in chains?”

“I didn’t,” Glimmer says, pained. “I teleported out every night, but I never got far before they caught me again. I was going to try again and ambush them from behind a ridge, but then this beautiful blonde Horde soldier fell out of a tree --”

“It was a controlled fall!” Adora insists. Her face is flushed and her head feels floaty. It’s probably an aftereffect of the vanishing. The _teleporting_. It’ll wear off eventually. Right?

As they leave the clearing, a voice reverberates from the little pool. It’s a beautiful voice; as high and cold as the moon, as delicate as the crystalline music of the water, with a resonance beyond any words formed by merely mortal lips. It’s also angry.

 _"Glimmer?"_ it calls. _"Glimmer, what is this nonsense about seeing Greece? I don’t care if you have a bodyguard, it isn't safe! Glimmer! I know you were using this mere, you can hear this! GLIMMER, GET BACK HERE AND ANSWER ME!"_

Glimmer speeds up a little. Adora glances back and hurries to keep up.


End file.
